incubation

1. 1. The act of incubating.
   2. The state of being incubated.
2. Medicine. The development of an infection from the time the pathogen enters the body until signs or symptoms first appear.
3. Medicine. The maintenance of an infant, especially a premature infant, in an environment of controlled temperature, humidity, and oxygen concentration in order to provide optimal conditions for growth and development.

A trial process in which a fund company operates a number of funds privately with its own capital or employee capital, and only opens the top performing funds to the public. The higher performing funds that survive the incubation period are used by the fund company to generate business. The funds with unattractive performance, which would be more difficult to market, are liquidated.

Investopedia Says:
While there is nothing illegal about this practice, some consider it to be unethical because it can overstate the investing performance of the fund company, creating what is known as incubation bias.

For example, suppose that a fund company starts three funds that earn returns of -5%, 2%, and 20% respectively over a one-year period. If the fund company only opens the 20% fund to the public and does not disclose the other performances, a bias is created because the average performance of the three funds is actually 5.7%.

Related Links:
Fund returns can be skewed dramatically by survivorship bias. Learn more so you won't be misled. The Truth Behind Mutual Fund Returns
Even if it emerges from old grey cocoons as a beautiful butterfly … but does anything really change? Watch Out For The Mutual Fund Metamorphosis
This popular investment vehicle has seen its share of ups and downs, successes and scandals. Read all about it here. A Brief History Of The Mutual Fund
Find out how this U.S.-born investment innovation became a $1-trillion industry that's both praised and vilified by the media. A Brief History Of The Hedge Fund

The maintenance of an ideal environment with regard to temperature, light, air, and humidity in order to foster development of an organism or culture.

1. the provision of proper conditions for growth and development, as for bacterial or tissue cultures.
2. development of a disease by multiplication of an infectious agent within the host.
3. the development of the embryo in the eggs of oviparous animals. See also avian incubation periods.
4. the maintenance of an artificial environment for a neonate, especially a premature one.

• artificial i. — use of a machine which warms, turns, humidifies bird eggs to incubate and eventually hatch them.
• i. behavior — see avian broodiness; almost non-existent in egg-laying birds; persists in meat strains and turkeys.
• i. period — the interval between effective exposure to a pathogenic infectious agent, leading to the invasion of the body and the establishment of the infection, and the appearance of the first clinical signs of the disease in question. Incubation periods vary from a few days to several years, depending on the causative organism and type of disease. See also extrinsic incubation period.

The Wikimedia Incubator is a wiki composed of test articles for Wikipedia and other Wikimedia wikis.

Look up incubation in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

The word incubation and similar (from the Latin incubare, "to lie upon") may refer to:

Science

• A neonatal incubator, device used to care for premature babies in a Neonatal intensive-care unit.
• Avian incubation, sitting on or brooding bird's eggs in order to hatch them
• Incubation period, a medical term for the time between being exposed to infection and showing first symptoms
• Incubate (festival), an annual independent culture festival in Tilburg, The Netherlands
• Incubation (psychology), the process of thinking about a problem subconsciously while being involved in other activities
• Incubator (microbiology), a device for maintaining a bacterial culture at a particular temperature for a set length of time, in order to measure bacterial growth
• Incubator (for birds' eggs)

Popular culture

• Talent incubator, a modern form of crowdsourcing whereby individuals can raise funds online to further a career in music (Sellaband), modeling (Beauty Holding) or sports (Little Yim)
• Incubation: Time Is Running Out, a 1997 computer game
• "Incubator" List of Farscape episodes#Season 3, a 2001 episode of the American TV series Farscape
• "Incubator" is a song by Israeli rock New Wave Post-Punk band HaClique off their 1981 album Ima Ani Lo Rotze Lehigamel
• "Incubation", a song released on the B-side of the Komakino flexi-single in 1980, and on the Substance (Joy Division album) in 1988

Other

• Business incubator, for startup businesses
• Incubation (ritual), the religious practice of sleeping in a sacred area with the intention of experiencing a divinely-inspired dream or cure
• Software incubation: software and community verification phase as done in the Apache Software Foundation and OSGeo Foundation

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)